In the latest episode of Talking Hoops, WEEI.com’s Paul Flannery is joined by SB Nation NBA editor Tom Ziller to talk about the lockout, the Celtics new TV deal, competitive balance and the impact of Yao Ming.

Ziller also provides an update on the Sacramento Kings situation and makes a list of all the things he’s looking forward to next season — if there is a “next season,” of course.

Berger said the key difference between the CBA negotiations in 1998 and 2011 is ‘a groundswell now of support among the owners to fundamentally change the sport.’

‘That was not the case in the ‘98-99 lockout,’ Berger said. ‘The owners wanted cost-certainty, now they want to be guaranteed profit. They essentially want the players crushed and brought to their knees.’

While Berger said that the two biggest issues in these negotiations are profit-splits and the hard-cap, he also criticized the NBA owners for misrepresenting their profitability to justify their position.

‘I don’t want to say that the owners are lying, or committing accounting fraud, or anything like that,’ Berger said. ‘But as anybody knows, anybody who’s ever done a tax return or opened a lemonade stand, you know that you can make the numbers say whatever you want them to say.

‘They are clearly massaging the figures so that certain expenses ‘¦ are counted on their books as money going out the door year after year, when it’s not really money going out the door.’

With the clock ticking toward the end of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the NBA has come up with a modified proposal for the player’s union. The current agreement ends at midnight on June 30 and it is expected that the owners will lockout the players if there is no agreement.

The league would guarantee no less than $2 billion in player salaries, which would represent a cut under the current agreement, but not as drastic as earlier projections.

The proposed salary cap would be set as $62 million, an increase from last year’s $58 million number with some flexibility built in, including retaining Bird rights and the mid-level free agent exception.

The league is also looking for a 10-year agreement.

The league is calling it a flex cap, similar to the NHL model. The player’s association has been adamant that they won’t accept a hard cap. This somewhere in between. The union is set to meet on Thursday with another meeting between the owners and players set for Friday in New York.